Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Best early 2000's syndicated dating show: Blind Date, Elimidate, or The 5th Wheel?

In the winter of 2003 I lived in Austin, Texas with a couple friends of mine from Martha's Vineyard. We were looking for a warm and fun place to pass the time until the next Vineyard season. When we got there we discovered that Austin was a much cheaper place to live than what we were used to (NYC, Boston, etc.), so we spent a good portion of our time there unemployed. In order to save some money we didn't get cable TV, and hardly went out that much. Our standard late night activities included watching 3 syndicated reality dating shows on whatever the local WB Network channel was.

The first was Blind Date, which came on at 12:30 am. To me it was the worst of the three, and involved cheesy pop-up bubbles on the screen. At 1 am Elimidate began, which was my favorite. A guy or girl went on a date with 4 members of the opposite sex, and would gradually get rid of them one at a time. Then at 1:30 it was time for The 5th Wheel, which was the most risque of the three. It involved 2 couples on a double date who would switch partners halfway through, but also a 5th random person was thrown into the equation. At the end they would all pick who they liked best, or nobody. At 2 am it was time to go to bed, and I remember constantly falling asleep annoyed at the people for not picking "nobody" often enough. Here's a clip from 5th Wheel, and vote in the poll on the right.